An ‘uncontrollable and all-consuming’ desire for physical intimacy while grieving is a common but little discussed phenomenon When Stacey Heale’s husband Greg Gilbert died from bowel cancer in 2021, she was floored by grief. Diagnosed at just 39, he’d finally succumbed to the disease after a five-year battle. “I was devastated,” Stacey says.
“Greg was amazing. We were together for 15 incredible years.” What Stacey didn’t expect to feel in the maelstrom of emotions such as sadness, denial, shock and anger, however, were strange and powerful feelings of sexual desire .
This sudden, unbidden rise in libido she recalls as being “incredibly intense. I can only describe it as like going through puberty all over again – that rush of physical feelings that build and wane and build ..
. you don’t understand them, but they are very real.” Heale did not want to talk to those close to her about what she was feeling: “It was confusing to me, the way my body was reacting, I just didn’t understand what was happening.
It wasn’t that I wanted someone else – I was devastated at losing Greg, but there it was – this involuntary physical need. I ended up researching online and discovered there was a term for what I was experiencing: ‘widow’s fire’.” Jessica Stephenson Clarke, a relationship coach for ARVRA wellness specialising in grief counselling, says the term describes “the strong desire for sex amid or following a bereavement.
Not everyone will ex.
